War!

War at Sea: The German submarine U-24 sinks the White Star Liner, “Arabic”, with the loss of 44 lives. In retaliation the British Royal Navy’s “HMS Baralong” tricks another U-boat, U-27 by flying a US flag and feigning the rescue of passengers from another British steamer, and then shelling and destroying the submarine. The 12 surviving crew of U-27 take refuge on the steamer they were about to destroy, but are summarily executed by a boarding party from the Baralong. (“the Baralong incident”).

BORN TODAY: in Hawkes Bay, New Zealand –RNZAF pilot Tame Hawaikirangi Thomas Waerea, who died in Europe in 1943, aged 28, and was buried in the Hanover War Cemetery, Niedersachsen, Germany, a long way from home, but is remembered at the Auckland Museum online cenotaph.

War!

War at Sea: the British steamer “Iberian” is shelled, torpedoed and sunk off the coast of Ireland by the German submarine U28. The U-boat’s skipper, Georg-Günther Freiherr (Baron) von Forstner, and five of his crewmen see a sea-monster, “a gigantic sea-animal, writhing and struggling wildly… [which shoots] out of the water to a height of 60 to 100 feet.”

All six of the sub-mariners then forget to report this strange incident until 18 years have elapsed, in 1933.

War!

Socialism in Italy: a “rising star” of the Italian socialist party, one Benito Mussolini, expresses the view that “Italian workers should give ‘not a penny’ to the cause of war, nor spill ‘one drop of blood’ for a cause that had ‘nothing to do with it’. If the government failed to declare neutrality, the proletatriat would force it to do so”. [Mark Thompson: “The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front, 1915-1919”].

Fire in Constantinople: A great fire in Istanbul, later attributed to Russian areoplane bombing, destroys over 3000 buildings.

On the Scottish home front: the SS Carisbrook, a British merchant steamer carrying wheat from Montreal, Canada, to Leith in Scotland, is captured and sunk by German submarine U-38 off the north east coast of Scotland.

War!

Eastern Front: At the Battle of Lemberg, German & Austro-Hungarian forces lauch an attack to re-take the city and the Austrian fortress lost to the Russians in 1914 (later Lwów in Poland, now Lviv in Ukraine).

Across Empires: in St John’s on the Island of St. Pierre et Miquelon ( a vestige of the colony of New France off the Atlantic coast of Canada) 242 Canadian recruits of “F” company embark on HM Troopship Calgarian, bound for Liverpool and the war in Europe, including Inuit and Métis volunteers from Labrador.

War!

War at Sea: Fifteen miles from the Irish coast, a German submarine torpedoes the passenger Liner, Lusitania, sending nearly 1200 passengers and crew to a watery grave, including 128 from the USA, still a neutral country.

War!

World affairs: In London, Italian diplomats agree to declare war on Germany and her allies within one month, in exchange for territory in the South Tyrol, and in the Adriatic, including Gorizia, Istria and most of Dalmatia – the homes of 230,000 German speaking Austrians and around 750,000 Slovenes and Croats, far outnumbering the 650,000 Italians also residing there. [The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front, 1915-1919].

Dardanelles: British submarine E-14 successfully passes through the Dardanelles, reaching the sea of Marmara and sinking a Turkish gunboat. [Burg & Purcell].